


Dissimulo, Somnio

by jeeno2



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Angst, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, F/M, First Time, Future Fic, Murder, Underage Sex, Very very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 23:10:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is no one, now.  But still the boy with the black hair haunts her dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissimulo, Somnio

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Disguise" prompt from the gameofships Ghost Ships Challenge on tumblr. I'd intended to write something fluffy but this is what happened instead. Apologies to anyone who actually speaks Latin for the title. ;)

The first time is unplanned.

Her target is a spice trader from Lys.  “With an unparalleled eye for beauty,” the Kindly Man had told her cryptically, a knowing look on his face.

But he needn’t have bothered, for the trader’s obsessive interest in women is obvious to anyone who has eyes to see.  The way he moves among the teeming masses in Braavos’ crowded streets, his head turning brazenly towards every single woman of even passing beauty that walks by, tells her everything she needs to know about the man.

The face she selects for their meeting once belonged to a beautiful woman from his homeland.  She chooses it to make him feel more at ease with her.  More trusting, more open.

With the Lys woman’s curves and ample breasts at her disposal it takes no effort at all to attract the spice trader’s attention and ensnare it.  She employs a coquettish giggle that a silly girl from her old life used around men.  She places a delicate hand on his arm and strokes it gently.  She whispers teasingly in his ear.

She’d originally planned to poison his drink.  But she never gets the chance.

He takes her to his quarters above the city’s main thoroughfare after only ten minutes of flirtatious banter.  Carries her, really; the Lys woman had been curvaceous but just as petite as she is herself beneath the mask, and he’s able to move her out of the Braavosi pub as if she weighed nothing at all.

The carpet on the man’s floor is plush and his bed has flowered sheets, but that is all she notices before he’s on top of her, tearing at her silken clothes with hands and teeth.

As he pushes her into the mattress she feels Needle’s cool flat edge pressing into the flesh of her back.

She always keeps the small sword on her person, hidden from sight but easily accessible.

Neither she, nor the stupid girl she used to be, have any idea what this trader from Lys plans to do with her body.  But the moment he spreads her legs and roughly sheaths her with a sword of his own, she knows exactly how she will dispense with his.

She decides to let him take his time.  The Many-Faced God, after all, doesn’t care if a man marked for death dies in agony or in ecstasy so long as, in the end, he dies.  She watches the trader’s face floating above her, raptly curious.  His dark brown eyes are open at first but soon flutter closed.  As his thrusts into her body become more frantic, his eyes screw more tightly shut and he bites his bottom lip.

On instinct she drags her fingernails down the man’s bare back.  He seems to like that.  When she begins to match his jerky thrusts with movements of her own it causes his head to fall forward and wrenches a guttural moan from his chest.

As he spills his seed inside her a moment later, shuddering and groaning, she pulls Needle from its strap and slits the man’s throat in one clean motion.  She shoves the trader from Lys off of her and stands up.

 _Valar marghulis_ , she whispers to his gasping, dying body as she wipes at the virgin’s blood trickling down her thighs.

\-------------

She’s the only female who has flowered presently working among the Faceless Men.  Even still, the Kindly Man doesn’t’ force her to take these assignments.

But he doesn’t have to.

It doesn’t take long for her to start craving the unique sort of power that only having a man on his knees, on his back, between her thighs, begging for release can give her.  After her second such encounter she requests more of them.

She soon learns there’s no shortage of Braavosi who would do just about anything to fuck a beautiful stranger.

The Faceless Men have an obligation to remain detached from their assignments.  It is their ancient tradition, and part of their vow to the Many-Faced God when they shed their old identities.  Yet it feels like retributive justice, somehow, to make men fall to their knees for her before poisoning them or cutting them from stem to stern.  A kind of vengeance by proxy for all the wrongs her old self suffered at the hands of so many different men.

Her favorites are the young, virginal ones.  They come along with her the most willingly, of course, and she rewards them with the most attractive faces and bodies at the Temple’s disposal.

Given that this will be their only time with a woman, she lets these beardless boys have their way with her.  Twice, sometimes, if they’re especially sweet.  She lets them fuck her mouth, her tits, the warm wet cavern between her thighs – her ass, if she’s feeling generous – anything they want.  The way they blubber in gratitude when she brings them to their climax is like a drug to her, the effects only enhanced when she slits their throats a moment later.

Occasionally, things go badly.  The brutal ones remind her of a mad boy king she once knew, and for them she takes a different approach.  She does not care what they do to her body – it’s never her body, after all; she doesn’t have a body anymore – but she still punishes them before they die.

For the cruelest men, she draws out the experience as long as possible, but denies them what they yearn for, slitting their throats when they’re on the very brink of ecstasy.

\-------------

Despite everything, her old life still returns to her in flashes.

Memories flood her whenever she sees a girl with long red hair.  Such girls are rare in Braavos, which only makes the memories more potent when they do come.

A small part of her that she keeps tucked away knows the real girl with the long red hair would be horrified at what she’s become.  She’d tell her that she’s ruined, that no good man will have her now.  She’d say that even the Seven will never forgive her.

Of course, the time for fretting over trivialities like good matches and what the Seven might think of her ended long ago.  Dismissing these troubling thoughts is easy enough. 

It’s the dreams that pose the much bigger problem.

Every night before bed, she prays to the Many-Faced God for a dreamless sleep.  But it doesn’t help.  Without fail, her old friend with the jet black hair and the blue eyes comes to her in her dreams at least one night in every seven, even after all this time.

In these dreams she tells this boy what she now knows whenever she allows herself to remember.  She tells him that she loved him when they were children, and that she was simply too young at the time to understand it. 

At her admission the boy always smiles against her lips.  He says the same words back to her, a shy blush rising on his cheeks as he does.  And then they laugh and topple together onto the softest bed she has ever known.

They love and twine together in her dreams for what feels like hours.  It’s nothing like her couplings with her targets.  Instead of primal thrusts and blind groping they share gentle caresses, whispered words, and sweet kisses.  He tells her repeatedly that he loves how she tastes, and he’ll run the tip of his tongue over the tops of her breasts, down her belly, and along her sex, sucking her small nub into his mouth.  He seems unable to get enough of that little spot, and he flicks it gently, but relentlessly, with his tongue until she shatters against it, both of them moaning loudly as she does.

And then she drops to her knees for him, wordlessly, and pleasures him with her own mouth, a look of pure rapture on his beautiful face as she engulfs him.

Afterwards, as they lie abed in each other’s arms, she lets her hands roam over his body.  Over his bare chest, his face, his muscular arms.  She tries to memorize everything she can about this boy while she has the chance, knowing, even in the dream, that it won’t last.

Yet these dreams always seem so _real_.  As real to her as the feel of Needle in her hand.  So real, in fact, that when he cries out her name in the throes of their passion she can almost remember what it used to be upon waking.

But when dawn comes the boy is gone, always, taking her old name and her old self with him.

She lingers in bed after he leaves, even though she knows it’s wrong.  She tries desperately to remember what he looked like.  What he felt like underneath her hands and inside her body.  But she can never quite manage it.

She hates herself for wanting to remember him so badly and tells herself, every morning, to stop trying.  She tells herself to become no one, _truly_ , as is expected of her.

She can’t quite manage that either.

\-------------

She doesn’t share her secret with the Kindly Man or anyone else.  He’ll take her sight away from her again if he ever learned that sometimes, her old name is on the very tip of her tongue, just out of reach.

And so every morning, after prayers, she dons another woman’s body like a mask and tries her best to put her old life behind her once more.


End file.
